There isn't enough
Mylanta in the world to cure me of college bowl sickness. This malady creeps up in
my stomach once a year when I rediscover that there are more bowls than cereals to
put them in. The past bowl
season offered up no fewer than 25 bowl games in 17 days. 'Twas the season to be
inundated. Worse yet, the Bowl Championship Series, while ultimately deciding a
national champion, could have left the whole college scene in a mess. Fortunately,
the one game that really counted among those 25 -- the Rose Bowl
contest between Miami and Nebraska on January 3 -- ended not only with a clear
winner, but a clear-cut national champion. We were lucky this time.

The solution to this madness? We need a playoff. A genuine playoff between the top
teams would decide the winners. Only, in my series I want to change things. Since I
regard performance in the pros as more significant than college performance, I want
to know which colleges would win an All-Star Game using only those players they've
put in the pros.

To that end, we set up an eight-team championship series in which each of the seven
games counts. Notice that in the NCAA Bowl Championship Series, the top eight teams
don't actually play one another. That is, after Miami won the Rose Bowl, it was
declared No.1 without having had to play the other six contestants. Imagine if this
happened in golf or basketball seedings! Should Tiger Woods be declared No.1 in the
Masters for just beating the second-ranked player in the tournament? Then why play
the rest of the Bowl Championship games? Just to sell tickets -- and products -- and make
some money for television?

Here we will play the games using a computer simulation to
run an eight-team, single-elimination tournament. The teams will comprise current
National Football League players, and the simulation will be based on the players'
performance in the pros during the 2000 season, because we had full-season stats to
rely on. In cases of some outstanding rookies for the 2001 season, such as Santana
Moss of the New York Jets, we fudged a little bit and used 2000 college stats. The
other benefit of a computer simulation? You don't have to sit through names like The
Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl or the Fed Ex Orange Bowl.
Who invented these titles? An ad writer on a binge?

We had wanted to kick this off with a field comprised of the top-12-ranked colleges
by the number of players they put in the NFL. But four of these 12 teams were
eliminated before the first coin flip because of roster holes. Those eliminated are
Nebraska, Ohio State, Florida and Georgia. I'm not doing this to be mean-spirited or
because I want to aggravate the fans of those teams. Nebraska has to go because it
doesn't have a single quarterback or wide receiver on any of the 31 NFL rosters.
Teams have won games, even Super Bowls, with poor quarterbacks. But you'd be hard
pressed to find a team that has won with no quarterback. Ohio State? It's out for
less obvious reasons: it lacks a center, a guard and a offensive tackle in a pro
uniform. Florida can't make the tournament either, as it would be playing without a
linebacker, strong safety and free safety. Georgia gets the boot since it lacks a
strong and free safety.

That leaves a strong field of eight, seeded by the number of players each college
put in the pros: Florida State (41), Notre Dame (41), Miami, FL (37), Michigan (37),
Texas A & M (34), Penn State (31), Tennessee (29) and the University of Southern
California (28). Hence the pairings are as follows: in one bracket, the winner of
USC versus Florida State will play the winner of Texas A & M versus Michigan. In
the other bracket, the victor of Tennessee versus Notre Dame will take on the winner
of Penn State versus Miami.

In case you were wondering, there's nothing mysterious about a computer simulation.
Since the process is grounded in statistics that measure performance, it is more
objective than polling. You start by entering the rosters and the relevant numbers
for each player. These statistics include a mix of the obvious and the complex -- like
yards per attempt for runners and quarterbacks, but also blocking, tackling,
break-away ability and other player tendencies. If the passing statistics of
quarterbacks like Kurt Warner and Kordell Stewart were similar, the computer will
still make distinctions between a pocket passer like Warner and an effective
scrambler like Stewart. Likewise, the simulation will treat differently punishing
backs that run between the tackles, such as Jerome Bettis, and slashing runners like
Edgerrin James, who can run wide. It is this numerical subtlety that makes the
results so true to reality, or at least our manufactured reality.

Since these are one-time All-Star games, the computer couldn't analyze what a team's
historic tendencies are, say, on third-and-2 -- is it running, passing, changing zone
coverage, making personnel substitutions? -- or how often it employs gimmick plays, or
whether first-and-10 is a passing or running down. Rather, the computer had to
analyze the talent of each All-Star squad and come up with lineups and strategies
based on comparisons to teams of comparable skill throughout NFL history.

Once the button is pushed, there is no digital equivalent of
thermonuclear war. Nothing like the whirring of machines and blinking of lights that
accompanied Frankenstein's birth, either. The simulation takes a matter of minutes
to go through all seven games. It generates a complete play-by-play report -- usually
150 to 175 plays per game -- and a box score. All games are played on a neutral site.

Let the games begin.

A ROSTER OF THE PLAYERS

These rosters consist of players from each college who were on
active rosters in 2001. Their performances from their 2000 season were used in the computer simulated
games.

First Round:University of Southern California vs. Florida State University

FSU Seminoles 30, USC Trojans 14

In the end, the Seminoles' quickness won out and sent the Trojans' passing game
limping home. Florida State's balanced talent on offense and defense prevailed over
the individual USC heroics of linebacker Junior Seau and quarterback Rob Johnson.
Johnson littered the field with 47 passes, racking up 418 yards for USC. The Trojans
even overcame wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson's fumble on the first play from
scrimmage and led, 14-13, at halftime.

But the Trojans couldn't fight off a swarming Seminoles defense in the second half.
Florida State got interceptions from four different backs and erased the halftime
deficit to win, 30-14.

While amassing 483 total yards, USC committed five turnovers. Meanwhile, Florida
State-cum-Carolina Panthers quarterback Chris Weinke passed for just 164 yards
(12-for-24) but didn't throw any interceptions. The turning point came in the third
quarter, when Florida State's Warrick Dunn broke off a 64-yard touchdown run that
gave the Seminoles a 20-14 lead. They never looked back.

Seau made a game-high 15 tackles for USC. Leroy Butler, a
12-year veteran, led a balanced defensive effort for Florida State with 12 tackles.